AIAA Aviation Forum

“AGILE is developing the next generation of aircraft Multidisciplinary Design and Optimization processes, which target significant reductions in aircraft development costs and time to market, leading to cheaper an greener aircraft solution. ”

AGILE ambition is to achieve the reduction of 20% in time to converge the design of an aircraft and a 40% in time needed to setup and solve the multidisciplinary problem in a team of heterogeneous specialists.

To meet the challenging objectives of the AGILE project a team of 19 industry, research and academia partners from Europe, Canada and Russia are collaborating together. The composition of the Consortium reflects the heterogeneous structure characteristic for today’s aircraft development teams.

Members from the AGILE consortium will be available to show you the details of the project, and discuss with you the planned collaboration activities.

The AGILE project targets the establishment of a collaborative MDO network. The developed methodologies and technologies in AGILE will be accessible to other research and educational activities via dedicated initiatived.

As part of H2020 EU project “AGILE”, A Collaborative System of Systems Multidisciplinary Design Optimization research approach is presented in this paper. This approach relies on physics-based analysis to evaluate the correlations between the airframe design, as well as propulsion, aircraft systems, aerodynamics, structures and emission, from the early design process, and to exploit the synergies within a simultaneous optimization process. Further, the disciplinary analysis modules from multiple organizations, involved in the optimization are integrated within a distributed framework. The disciplinary analysis tools are not shared, but only the data are distributed among partners through a secured network of framework. In order to enable and to accelerate the deployment of collaborative, large scale design and optimization frameworks, the “AGILE Paradigm”, a novel methodology, has been formulated during the project. The main elements composing the AGILE Paradigm are the Knowledge Architecture (KA), and the Collaborative Architecture (CA). The first formalizes the overall product development process in a multi-level structure. The latter formalizes the collaborative process within the entire supply chain, and defines how the multiple stakeholders interact with each other.The current paper is focused on the application of using the AGILE Paradigm to solve system of stystems MDO on a regional jet transport aircraft.

The focus of the current research paper is:

Creation of a system of systems frame work using AGILE Paradigm to support multi-disciplinary distributive analysis capability. The framework involves physics based modules such as : Airframe synthesis, aerodynamics, structures, aircraft systems, propulsion system design, nacelle design, nacelle airframe integration, aircraft mission simulation, costs and emissions.

Validate the frame work with case study of a regional jet reference aircraft.

Assess the sensitivity and coupling of design parameters, local disciplinary optimizataion and its effect on global optimization objectives or constraints.

The effects of varying Bypass Ratio (BPR) of engine, offtake effects due to degree of electrification and nacelle effects are propagated through the AGILE MDO framework and presented.

Aircraft, and in particular military aircraft, are complex systems and the demand for high-performance flying platforms is constantly growing both for civil and military purposes. The development of aircraft is inherently multidisciplinary and the exploitation of the interaction between the disciplines driving the design opens the door for new (unconventional) aircraft designs, and consequently, for novel aircraft having increased performance. An important feature of modern aircraft development processes and procedures is to enable the engineers accessing complex design spaces also in the conceptual design phase in which key configuration decisions are made and frozen for later development phases. Pushing more MDO and numerical analysis capabilities into the early design phase will support the decision-making process through reliable physical information. It is worth mentioning that these design spaces are very large and can hardly be grasped and explored by humans without a structured approach and massive support of numerical analysis methods. The challenge is even larger when specialized competences are provided by several multidisciplinary teams that are distributed among different organizations. One one side there is the challenge to exchange consistent sets of data among automated simulation sub-processes. On another side there is the challenge of a coherent interpretation and understanding of the data generated. The first challenge is typically related to the lack of a collaborative platform connecting inter-organizations legacy processes. The second challenge is due to a lack of a common knowledge formalization through all the elements of the product development (disciplinary, process, development phases related). Many of the mentioned collaborative development challengesare addressed by AGILE (Aircraft 3rd Generation MDO for Innovative Collaboration of Heterogeneous Teams of Experts) [1], an EU H2020 funded research project coordinated by the German Aerospace Center (DLR). Within the AGILE project multiple use cases (aircraft designs) and MDO scenarios are formulated. This paper highlights the proper setup of industrial large scale optimisation elaborating the transition from aircraft to airframe level. Focus is on the transition from the conceptual aircraft solution to the detailed airframe design, based on a variable fidelity formulation for the disciplines involved in the exploration and optimization process. Section 2 at first summarizes the AGILE project and the overall methodology under development. Section 3 presents the aeroelastic use case and the main components integrated into the process. The final section presents the conclusion and provides an outlook on future developments.

AIAA-2017-4140Methodological enhancements in MDO process investigated in the AGILE European project

This paper presents methodological investigations performed in research activities in the field of MDO in overall aircraft design in the ongoing EU funded research project AGILE. AGILE is developing the next generation of aircraft Multidisciplinary Design and Optimization processes, which target significant reductions in aircraft development costs and time to market, leading to cheaper and greener aircraft solutions.The paper introduces the AGILE project structure and describes the achievements of the 1st year (Design Campaign 1) leading to a reference distributed MDO system. A focus is then made on the different novel optimization techniques studied during the 2nd year, all willing to ease the optimization of complex workflows, characterized by high degree of discipline interdependencies, high number of design variables in the context of multi-level and multi-partner collaborative engineering projects. Then the implementation of these methods in the enhanced MDO framework is discussed.

The AGILE project is developing the next generation of development processes, and deploying a collaborative MDO design system, called the AGILE development framework (ADF). Naturally, such a system contains a lot of implicit assumptions on how things should be done and how to exploit different existing technologies. This collection of assumptions and technologies is labeled the ‘AGILE Paradigm’. The two main building blocks of this paradigm are the Collaborative Architecture and the Knowledge Architecture. In essence, these building blocks aim to support large, heterogeneous teams of experts in performing collaborative development in a streamlined and time-effective way. This paper has a focus on the definition of the Knowledge Architecture (KA) as a general conceptual framework which is independent of the aircraft-specific application in AGILE. The KA can be applied to perform collaborative automated design in large, heterogeneous teams for any complex system (e.g. aircraft, automobiles, wind farms). The KA is structured with a multi-level backbone: Development Process layer, Automated Design layer, Design Competence layer.A fourth transverse layer impacting all other layers is the Data & Schemas layer. Each layer has its own set of assumptions and technologies, but more importantly, interfaces between the levels have to be created in order to have a fully interconnected development process from each design competence up to the top-level business process. The hierarchical levels and interfaces are described in this paper as a generalized paradigm. In addition, four support platforms of the KA in the AGILE project are described in more detail: the development process environment, graph-based support in the design problem formulation, visualization of large, complex automated design processes, and design concepts formalizations. Finally, a use case from the AGILE project is mapped on this paradigm to demonstrate the use of the KA and its support platforms in a realistic design case.

The AGILE project is developing the next generation of aircraft Multidisciplinary Design and Optimization processes, which target significant reductions in aircraft development costs and time to market, leading to cost-effective and greener aircraft solutions. In order to enable and to accelerate the deployment of collaborative, large scale design and optimization frameworks, the “AGILE Paradigm”, a novel methodology, has been formulated during the project. The main elements composing the AGILE Paradigm are the Knowledge Architecture (KA), and the Collaborative Architecture (CA). The first formalizes the overall product development process in a multi-level structure. The latter formalizes the collaborative process within the entire supply chain, and defines how the multiple stakeholders interact with each other. This paper focuses on the Collaborative Architecture, which enables cross-organizational and cross-the-nation integration of distributed design competences of all the 19 project partners. The paper presents the Collaborative Architecture concepts, the underlying requirements, and the main CA deployment elements. Although the deployment of the CA is product independent, the implementation is presented for the AGILE reference use case, addressing the design and optimization of a transport aircraft.

AIAA-2017-4137The AGILE Paradigm: the next generation of collaborative MDO

The AGILE project is developing the next generation of aircraft Multidisciplinary Design and Optimization processes, which target significant reductions in aircraft development costs and time to market, leading to more cost-effective and greener aircraft solutions. 19 industry, research and academia partners from Europe, Canada and Russia are developing solutions to cope with the challenges of collaborative product development. In order to enable and to accelerate the deployment of collaborative, large-scale design and optimization frameworks for the development of complex products, a novel methodology, the so-called AGILE Paradigm, is currently under development. The main elements composing the AGILE Paradigm are the Knowledge Architecture (KA), and the Collaborative Architecture (CA). The technologies developed by the AGILE consortium have been used to implement the AGILE Paradigm, thus making it not only an abstract formalization of a methodology, but an applicable framework: the AGILE Development Framework (ADF). This paper introduces the AGILE Paradigm with all its conceptual elements and the framework’s key enablers. The paper addresses multiple use cases and achievement reached by the AGILE developments. All the technologies necessary to deploy the AGILE Paradigm will be accessible to the MDO community.